She runs away before winter solstice, is gone through Christmas Eve and Christmas, comes home right before New Year’s, looking ruddier, more vibrant. Home being relative, and in this case referring to the place she keeps the most stuff. The most jackets and the most boots and the most dresses and the most diaries. Also […]
The first day of 8th grade, Debbie and I make bets on who will lose her virginity. By choice, I mean, as opposed to the way we’ve had it. That weekend, I pass out at a party and when I come to I’m in the bathroom being fun-dipped by this older guy while my boyfriend pounds on […]
He says she’s guarded, that she’s got armor. But that doesn’t sound like her. Her words are more like . . . Poise. And subterfuge. She’s perched in his windowsill, writing. The house is old. It’s early morning and there is spring snow falling, uncertain in its descent. She left the house early for coffee. “Lie […]
There are moments when I have the sense he’s messing with all of the neat little packages lining my shelves. Things I’ve wrapped up carefully, put away, to be looked at much, much later. One at a time with large spaces of time in between. If at all. “Where were you living and what were […]
It is mother’s day and I am maybe 12 or 13 or it doesn’t matter because one day it will all flow together and become indistinguishable anyway, and she has decided that I will be accompanying her to church. In the years leading up to this point, my father was still alive and the notions of my […]
my delusions 